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Alpinist Magazine Issue 46 - Spring 2014

Features Mountain Profile: Darran Mountains, New Zealand For more than 100 years, small bands of climbers have struggled through rain-soaked forests to reach the great ice and rock lines of the Darran Mountains in New Zealand. And yet, even today, many of the vast walls remain largely unknown. Paul Hersey...

Features

Mountain Profile: Darran Mountains, New Zealand

For more than 100 years, small bands of climbers have struggled through rain-soaked forests to reach the great ice and rock lines of the Darran Mountains in New Zealand. And yet, even today, many of the vast walls remain largely unknown. Paul Hersey sifts through the rich stories of this oft-forgotten range, from the early days of Maori exploration to New Zealand alpinist Guy McKinnon's 2013 first ascent of the 1900-meter West Face of Mt. Tutoko. Allan Uren, Mayan Smith-Gobat, Richard Thomson, Alastair Walker and Pat Deavoll offer perspectives on the modern renaissance of a place that's increasingly become the center of New Zealand's technical alpinism.

The Illusion of Control

In March 2012, thirty-four-year-old Chris Van Leuven visited the great American climber Harvey T. Carter during his final days in a Colorado Springs hospital. The eighty-one-year-old man's words became the catalyst for a quest to understand how climbing prepares us for the challenges of ordinary existence, the approach of old age and the unavoidability of loss. Over the next two years, Van Leuven embarked on a series of conversations with three climbers, now in their fifties and sixties, whose youthful exploits resembled aspects of Carter's career. And with Stewart Green, Ed Webster and Jimmie Dunn, he now explores the consequences and rewards of choosing a focused life.

Departments

The Sharp End

The fragility of fierce places.

Letters

One reader shares what it's like to night
climb without hearing. Another explains
the true history of the Ice Hammock.

On Belay

In recent years, a small group of Korean
alpinists have been carrying out bold and
often underreported minimialist ascents in the
Himalaya. Peter Jensen-Choi looks back at some
of the origins of modern Korean alpine-style.